A cup of coffee over the morning paper

Just been me and the dogs all morning. Nice walk through the neighborhood. Earlier, they sat quietly with me as I poured over the morning paper with a cup o' joe. Found a few interesting tidbits.

According to this, people in Pinal County are camping out overnight to have at just-released new-home lots. That's just crazy.

And according to this, freeway shootings are back in vogue in So Cal. Much the way they were 18 years ago. I remember that...I spent part of that summer working at KLOS-FM in LA. To get there I had to travel three of the LA metro's most fun freeways: the 101, 405 and a quick trip on I-10. Good times!

But this is what really caught my eye...some folks in Tucson are paying a mere $1.83-a-gallon for E85, an environment-friendly and cheaper blend of gasoline:

Alex Contreras grins as he pumps a mixture of corn alcohol and gasoline into his pickup truck.He is paying just $1.83 a gallon for the alternative fuel, called E85, while regular gasoline at the adjacent pump costs $2.27. The E85 makes his truck run better and with more power than gasoline, he says, as well as producing less air pollution. "It's pretty good stuff," the 51-year-old west Tucson resident says. "I also use it in my wife's vehicle."

As a conservative, it's assumed that I hate babies, puppies, old-people and of course anyone who isn't white. Tops of that list of course is trees. We conservative-types really got in for the environment you know! I read on:

People in the Valley could be using E85, too, because thousands of late-model vehicles are built to use it. But the Tucson station is the only place in Arizona where drivers can buy the cheaper, cleaner fuel.

E85 has been selling briskly at the Tucson station, an Arizona Petroleum commercial fueling site, mainly to private motorists seeking to save 40 cents or more a gallon. The price gap between the fuel and regular gasoline has become accentuated in the past month since gas prices began to climb.

Hhhhmmm...makes me start to wonder. I'm a price-shopper when it comes to gasoline. I drive a mid-level sedan. Biggest thing I've ever owned, but hardly one of those targets of environmentalist-hate, like a Hummer or Suburban.

In the past, the price of E85 was comparable with gasoline, which reduced the interest from consumers, except those worried about air pollution or U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Recent federal regulations that added tax incentives for producers of ethanol have helped keep the retail prices low this year while gas prices climb."Basically, that brings it down to a pricing level that's attractive for the consumer to buy it," says Clark Thomas, president of Denver-based American Petroleum.

Those sounds you hear are the gears in my head turning. Did someone say, "Cheaper gas!?" I press on: E85 sales have been steadily climbing at the Tucson station since December, when American Petroleum added the alternative fuel to its offerings, which include biodiesel fuel and environmentally friendly automotive lubricants and fluids. "With the recent (gasoline) price increases, there's been a lot more interest," Hittle says. "This is just one station and not in the best location, but sales have definitely been building."

Thousands of late-model Ford, General Motors and Chrysler vehicles, including the popular Ford Explorer and Chevrolet Silverado, could be using E85 if it was available. Called flexible-fuel vehicles, or FFVs, they are mostly trucks and SUVs, and come equipped from the factory to use the fuel. "Most people don't even know they own flex-fuel vehicles," says Colleen Crowninshield, Clean Cities coordinator for Pima County.

As I get to the end of the article, I find my curiosity piqued. So much so that I seek out page B3 where the fine folks at the Republic have published a list of FFV vehicles. There I discover my make, model and year is potentially included in the limited pool of vehicles: "Selected vehicles. See owners manual."

I'm ready to go, but then of course I remember this: "For some reason, E85 has no presence here," says Bill Scheafer, spokesman for the Valley of the Sun Clean Cities Coalition. "We have not found any entity interested in marketing it here."

The Valley would do well to diversify its fuel sources, Scheafer says, noting how the gasoline pipeline break last year caused disruption of supplies and panic-buying. "The whole thing about energy independence is especially acute here since we're fed gasoline through a thin straw," he says.

My good friends at ESPN routinely like to bellow about how markets don't move fast enough to produce the environmental paradise we'd all be living in if we'd just listen to them. Well, allow me to say that the market, in this particular instance, would move me to the step of seeking out alternative fuel if it were available here. I'd like to think that's not bad for an old tree-hater!

Who says markets don't work!